alstry (< 20)

Are you ready to get ANGRY?

10

If you think health care reform makes people upset....wait until people find out their retirement account is gone.

Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro said it’s “critical” for regulators to gain more access to information on derivative transactions in order to police market abuses.

Regulators need “information that allows us to construct an audit trail, so that we can find insider trading, manipulation and other concerns that can reverberate through the entire marketplace,” Schapiro said in an interview for Bloomberg Television’s “Conversations with Judy Woodruff” airing tonight. That ability “is really going to be critical.”

Lawmakers are studying derivatives after price movements fueled concern last year that financial firms were approaching collapse. American International Group Inc.’s bets on credit- default swap crippled the insurer, requiring a $182.5 billion U.S. bailout. In June, Schapiro told a Senate panel inquiries were being “seriously complicated” by difficulties identifying derivatives investors and determining the size of their trades.

“We can bring a lot more stability and soundness to this marketplace through the regulation of these instruments,” she said. “The SEC should absolutely have a role in policing these instruments, particularly where these instruments are economic substitutes for securities.”

Though lawmakers decided in 2000 to exempt derivatives from government oversight, the financial industry now recognizes there is broad consensus in Washington to regulate the instruments, Gensler said in an interview yesterday.

It is amazing how long they have dragged their feet on this issue...when it comes to light, credit default swaps will make Madoff seem like a petty fraudster....the key difference this time is America is the client.

Even if federal calculations show the cost of living has dropped, Arizona's senior citizens aren't feeling it.

Medical and utility costs are rising, and for the first time in a generation, Social Security recipients likely will not get annual increases for the next year or two.

The prospect has them re-evaluating their budgets and scratching their heads.

WHY DOES ALSTRY GET PISSED?

Ann Moore, 72, said her monthly prescription expenses recently rose from $450 to $900 because she reached an annual Medicare gap in prescription coverage.

Edward Diamond, 72, said insurance companies often make policy changes that leave seniors paying more for medicine. He had one co-pay that rose from $10 a month to $165 over the past few years. And that is just one of 15 pills he needs.

He said seniors have to decide whether to spend money on food, medicine or air-conditioning.

"The frailty of some of these seniors is to a point where a decision has to be made that could be detrimental," Diamond said.

A Minneapolis headhunting firm has closed its doors and shut down its website, leaving a trail of questions and disgruntled customers who say they shelled out thousands of dollars to land a job but never got results.

A paper sign taped to the locked glass door of the company's 12th-floor office in the Baker Building in downtown Minneapolis says: "Arthur Group Executive Search." On it, someone scribbled, "Fraud! I want my money back!"

In a phone interview Thursday, Trimble, 46, of Dellwood, denied misleading clients, saying it's clear in the company's agreements that it does not make any guarantees. He also said that the jobs did exist. "We had numerous jobs right up until the end. They were real jobs."

He blamed the closure in Minneapolis and an office in the Chicago area on a bad economy. "We couldn't afford to keep the doors open without the income," he said.

One former employee, Edward Guck, 42, of Edina, said clients were misled "without a doubt."